At last the wind was dropping. He sauntered up to the top of the avenue and out by the top lodge beyond the trees, where a pale moon showed him the land sinking in a vast, watery hollow and then rising again. He thought suddenly of Deb, and wondered how she had ever come to countenance Slinkin’ Lyndesay.
Deb was one of the Kilne Lyndesays—a branch more remote from the parent stem than either that in Devonshire or at Arevar, but in many ways closest of all. Kilne Lyndesays had been Crump stewards for centuries, serving the fine estate from father to son with inherited and increasing devotion, which found in Roger, the last of the list, its most perfect expression and, alas! its culmination, also. For Roger had no son to follow him; only a daughter, to whom the heritage could not pass.
For forty years he had set all his brain, his energy and his love to the prospering of Crump, and under his hands it had touched its highest point of fortune. During Stanley’s long minority he had nursed the estate like a tender, living thing, backed by William Lyndesay in all he did, and handing it over at last with the mingled anguish of pride and pain which only those know who have given themselves whole-heartedly for what is not their own. He had wished to resign at the time, but Mrs. Lyndesay had pressed him to remain in charge, pleading Stanley’s youth and inexperience, and for two years longer he had stayed at his post. But he took badly to the new position, and the reaction of fulfilled work as well as the languor of old age was upon him, so that the end of the two years found the Crump agency gone from his branch for ever. The wrench had been cruel at first, but now the peace of evening had reached him, and his mind dwelt chiefly in the past. And at least the old home was left to him. That had been one of Slinker’s few gracious acts in his short but singularly ungracious life.
Sometime in his fifty-third year, Roger Lyndesay had withdrawn his attention momentarily from the estate, and married a Morton from Appleby, thrown by fate across his path on a visit, a quiet lady who had drifted gently into Kilne, and almost as imperceptibly out of it to her grave on the high fell-side. So Deb had been a lonely little girl in a lonely house,—a rather fierce, intensely reserved little girl, pure Lyndesay and no Morton whatever, a strange little girl who loved the woods and the silent places, and rarely made friends with anybody in her own station. She was bred in awe of Crump, and held aloof from the Lyndesay boys in a mood that was half reverence and half resentment, though for Lionel, to whom these sentiments did not apply, she had her moments of kindly condescension. Her education was represented by a series of battles royal with inadequate daily governesses until she was thirteen, when her solitary Morton aunt descended in wrath, and bore her south for five weary and interminable years. She had come back at last, however, polished and finished, a masked Lyndesay as much as any of them.
She had certainly been difficult to know, Christian reflected, looking back upon the four years since her return, and his own college vacations. He had really seen very little of her, considering the tie between the two houses, and their near situation; and for the last eighteen months he had been abroad, glad to escape from the atmosphere of his home, yet tortured always by the Lyndesay longing for his own soil.
He was in Japan when the news of the engagement reached him, and he had written a couple of congratulatory notes, wondered a little, and let the matter pass. It was fairly easy to understand, after all, whatever you might think of Slinker. She was poor, probably ambitious, and Lyndesay of Crump was the Catch of the County (always with capitals). Any girl might have done it, he had thought—in Japan; but to-night he had seen her with new eyes, and he wondered again. She had not looked that sort of girl, he reflected—not in the least the sort of girl to stand Slinker for a second after she had once really known him.
Of course it was easy for him to sneer, to call her in question. The temptation was not lightly to be despised, a Lyndesay not lightly to be said nay—if only it had been anybody but Slinker! Slinker’s face rose before him with its pale-blue gaze, colourless hair and smooth, guileless smile, and he frowned distressfully. Surely she must have shut the eyes of her soul!
He strolled back through the trees in the faint light filtering on to the muddy road at his feet. The striving arms were growing fitfully still; the land seemed to be curling itself into sleep with a tired sigh. He thought fancifully that his very passing had hushed it to rest. It had risen in storm for the flight of Slinker’s spirit; for the new master it had sunk into peace. He spread his hands over it in a sort of benediction as he came out in front of the house. He would see that it was cherished.
As he went up the steps, the first stroke of the passing bell came to him across the desolate park and the troubled water, and he stood bareheaded while it told its tale of death, each long pause between the heavy notes fraught full with listening souls that had gone home on the same music. He shivered a little as he turned at last to the empty hall. His mother was upstairs—he did not need to ask where. The land was glad of him, but he wanted a more human touch than that. The place was so lonely and yet so full of ghosts! Even Slinker would have been better than nothing. But Slinker was dead, and Christian was Lyndesay of Crump. Looking up at the eyeless windows, he wondered how long it would be before he came to lie where Slinker was lying, shot into eternity by the family fate.